Here’s why AI automation is pissing me off

Researchers at Harvard sat people down in front of a computer screen and asked them a very simple question, a thousand times in a row.

“Is this dot blue?”

The results were fairly predictable until partway through they started showing fewer blue dots. Instead of answering, “no” more often, people started calling purple dots blue.

The same thing happened with faces.

When threatening faces got rare, neutral looking faces became threatening. When unethical requests became rare, innocent ones started sounding shady. There’s a name for it, but basically, when something becomes rare, your brain expands the definition of it so it can keep finding it.

The reason I bring all this up is because I was walking to the coffee shop with my buddy Justin yesterday, and said, "The more I automate with AI, the less tolerance I have for actual work."

“What do you mean?”

"The more I automate tedious, menial tasks in my business, the more annoyed I get doing the tedious, menial stuff I haven't automated yet."

And every time I run into a new one, the same thought shows up…

"Damnit. I gotta automate this."

Now, I know that sounds like I'm one of those guys who outsourced his brain to AI and can't tie his shoes anymore. And there's a whole genre of writing out there about how AI is contributing to the stupification of the world.

But I don't buy it.

With the feeling of “tedious” becoming more rare, I’m just finding more tasks “tedious”… and then automating them so I can spend more time being creative or playing pickleball.

I’ve haven’t sat down and created an “automation strategy” yet.

I’ve just paid attention to the tasks I don’t like doing and automating them. Which I think is actually a pretty decent prioritization system. But I do think it matters what you decide to hand off.

The ideas you produce yourself definitely stick with you more.

So I wouldn’t recommend outsourcing that.

And the moment you start to trust AI over your own intuition is the moment you start to lose critical thinking. And I think the “stupification” crowd is assuming everyone is going to walk mindlessly down that path.

Anyway, the reason I’m telling you all this is I like write.

And I’d like to spend more time writing. So I’m happy to hand off all the tasks that aren’t writing to automated processes I’ve built in the background.

But you?

You get to automate whatever you want so you can spend more time leaning into your zone of genius.

I’m flying today, but when I’m back home this week I’ll be reaching out to folks about the workshop series on building this AI-powered second brain content system using Notion and Claude/Codex.

So if you want in, and you haven’t let me know, just reply back with “I’m interested” and I’ll make sure you’re the first to know.

Talk soon

Kevin Hood